breathing in snowflakes
by andthenshesaid
Summary: The middle of a snowstorm on the week after Christmas. America/Belarus.


_breathing in snowflakes _

/

**prompts: cancer, Christmas, blizzards, Ada (Vladimir Nabakov), pictures on walls.  
>for: Lea, who gives me prompts (which i blatantly fail at) and distracts me from real life.<br>disclaimed. **

/

He finds her in the middle of a snowstorm on the week after Christmas – that complicated little space of time between the 25th and New Years where Alfred really never knows what to do with himself, but his family always overstays their welcome and he eats too much and sleeps. She's sitting on this empty park bench, just her and silver hair blowing the wind.

He thinks at first that she might be some kind of imaginary fairy like the kind Arthur likes to make up, but then he remembers that he's an average high school junior with a 3.2 GPA and a baseball scholarship on the way and winter isn't even his favorite season but the point is that things like that don't happen to guys like him. The whole romantic young adult novel stuff – that's reserved for boys like Mattie who cook better than anything in the entire world and his cousin, the one with the red hair and the eyes that flickered between green and gold. And he sees the book in her hands – it's got a black cover and he thinks the name on it might be Russian. He doesn't think fairies read books.

"Hey." He says, and it is so loud that it shatters the silence around them. "Are you okay?"

She looks up, and she's got these pretty eyes. Dark violet or blue or indigo, like looking up at city lights or constellations, and yeah, Alfred thinks he could get lost in those. Her nose is bright red from the cold and she's got this crumpled white pile of tissues piled next to her. She's not dressed for the cold, either, and he lets his gaze linger on her bare legs and collarbone.

"Maybe." She says, which isn't really an answer.

He thinks about how he used to date this girl named An. She was cute – always wore her hair in this inky black ponytail and her nose would crinkle when she laughed and her room was plastered with photographs of different places, so that he could look in one corner and be in a rice paddy in the middle of Vietnam and he could look by the window and he'd be in downtown Tokyo. She always said things like _maybe_ and _possibly _and _kind of_ and then it turned out she'd been fucking Christian behind his back and suddenly the majority of the landscapes on her wall were of the Australian Outback and beaches with glistening water and pink sand.

The girl in the park coughs, this ragged thing.

He offers her his jacket, and she offers him a seat.

/

"Natalia." She says, after he asks her for a name.

This boy – this sunshine boy whose sitting next to her on a park bench in the middle of nowhere, and it all makes her want to laugh.

His name is Alfred and he smiles like he's in a cartoon and he's nothing like anything else in her monochromatic life – Ivan and Father Winter and Katka and the boy next door with his sad green eyes – so she puts down her book – _Ada or Ardor_, which Father Winter had given her last week with a scary glint in his eye – and actually looks at him.

His eyes make her think about cloudless days, the kinds that are so cold they take your breath away.

"Do you want to get a coffee with me?" He asks, laughing nervously. She feels a twinge of guilt, maybe, that he's asking all the questions and she's giving one word answers but maybe that's just how she is or maybe something about his eyes and face and hair and the warmth of his jacket around her shoulders have turned her into a mute.

She shakes her head.

"… Okay." He waits a beat. "Do you want me to leave?"

She shakes her head again.

"Okay." And the breath he exhales is a bright white cloud.

/

The girl – Natalia, and that name fits, because he could see this princess in an icy tower surrounded by frozen roses and books – doesn't really want to talk to him.

He's vaguely okay with that, vaguely okay with this sitting still and not talking and breathing in and out, but a part of him prickles uncomfortably at the silence and then he's look at her, looking at her sharp cheekbones and the way she's just sitting there – not reading anymore, just watching the snow build up on the ground.

"What – what were you reading?" He asks again.

"A book."

He'd think she hated him, except for the way she curled into his jacket and breathed the same air as him and smiled, sometimes, just at everything.

"Oh."

And then there's silence again.

"Tell me about your life." She says.

/

When she talks, he grins real quick and the white of his teeth lights up the entire world.

"What about it?"

"Anything." Because maybe she's tired of the silence.

And so he starts talking. About his name and his brother and his cousins and his best friend and fairy's and movies – his favorites are the ones with guns and the old black and white westerns – and the presents he got for Christmas and what air fresheners he put into his car and how math was the worst subject in the whole world and she smiles and listen.

Natalia doesn't know how long he talks, because her toes were already frozen by the time Alfred had arrived, but by the time he's telling her about the many reasons Arrested Development shouldn't have been canceled, her legs feel like ice and her shoes are buried in the snow.

"What about you – tell me about your life?"

She shakes her head and thinks that there's not nearly as much to tell.

/

"Please?" He asks, and she shrugs.

"I'm dying."

The thing is, he can't tell if she's joking or lying or confiding in him because they aren't friends. They've known each other for less than three hours, all of it spend sitting on the same park bench.

"Oh." And then it's quiet again, but he stretches his hand across the three inches between their bodies and grips her fingers in his.

/

Later – in seconds, in hours, in minutes, in years – they'll go back home.

Alfred's still overflowing with guests from the holiday, sharing his room with Arthur and Peter, with a fake Christmas tree because his mother is allergic, smelling like home cooked meals and the couch doesn't match the armchair but there's a picture he did of a dog in kindergarten hanging up in the hallway. Natalia's all empty and cold with Katka lying on her bed complaining of migraines again and Father Winter will be sitting in the sleek leather couch, reading the paper in Russian and Ivan will be in his room pretending he doesn't exist, but there is a myriad of multicolored pills in the medicine cabinet and overflowing bookshelf in her room and pressed sunflowers hanging up around the kitchen.

Alfred will kiss Natalia on her frozen lips and then smile so bright and they'll both stand there for a second, reveling in this one moment.

But for now, they're just sitting in the middle of a snow globe, because it's not Christmas, because they're not really grown up yet, because they can.

/

**please don't favorite without reviewing **

**(also australia/vietnam is so happening in the background of everything. go with it.) **


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